Discontent and Its Civilizations
Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Discontent and its Civilizations is the essential first collection of non fiction from Mohsin Hamid.
Discontent and its Civilizations collects the best of Mohsin Hamid's writing on subjects as diverse and wide-ranging as Pakistan; fatherhood; the death of Osama Bin Laden and the writing of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Unified by the author's humane, clear-headed and witty voice, the book makes a compelling case for recognizing our common humanity while relishing our diversity - both as readers and citizens; for resisting the artificial mono-identities of religion or nationality or race; and for always judging a country or nation by how it treats its minorities, as 'Each individual human being is, after all, a minority of one'.
Mohsin Hamid writes regularly for The New York Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and is the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moth Smoke and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Born and mostly raised in Lahore, he has since lived between Lahore, London and New York.
'Mohsin Hamid is a master critic of the modern global condition, using humanization, wit, parody and other devices to examine how the fast pace of social and economic change has affected the individual' Foreign Policy
'The new voice of a generation. A writer at the top of his game' Metro
'One of the most talented writers of his generation' Daily Telegraph
Mohsin Hamid writes regularly for The New York Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and is the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moth Smoke and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Born and mostly raised in Lahore, he has since lived between Lahore, London and New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of 36 essays will be of most interest to dedicated fans of Pakistani novelist Hamid (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia). Others, however, may be disappointed to find that the pieces, most of which were previously published, tend to be topical and of limited scope. Hamid, who has also lived in New York City and London, provides a voice of reasoned tolerance on the issues dividing the Middle East and the West,, but he might have been better served by writing a memoir. Instead, he offers thoughts on a wide variety of topics, some more rewarding than others: e-books, whether TV dramas are the new good novels, the home-cooked dinner he almost made for Toni Morrison, etc. An essay on President Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo seems out of date; the piece would have benefited from an afterword giving Hamid's view of the speech's lasting significance. The lighthearted essays dilute the impact of the more substantive sections especially those delving into the so-called clash of civilizations, such as the title essay, in which he writes: "The idea that we fall into civilizations, plural, is merely a politically convenient myth."
